page_title: Richard Mohun
section_title: Tanganyika-Nile telegraph expedition
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Mohun / Tanganyika-Nile telegraph expedition
caption_attribution_description: The Rhodes Colossus: Caricature of Cecil John Rhodes, after he announced plans for a telegraph line and railroad from Cape Town to Cairo.
context_page_description: Richard Dorsey Loraine Mohun was an American explorer, diplomat, mineral prospector and mercenary. Mohun worked for the United States government as a commercial agent in Angola and the Congo Free State. During his time as commercial agent, he volunteered to command a unit of Belgian artillery in a campaign to force Arab slavers from the colony.
  Mohun remained in the service of the US government during this time and was subsequently posted as consul to Zanzibar. In this capacity, he was called upon to act as an intermediary between the combatants in the Anglo-Zanzibar War. Following the conclusion of his three-year posting, Mohun returned to the Congo to prospect for minerals, and later worked with the Belgian authorities.
  His most ambitious undertaking was a three-year expedition, beginning in 1898, that laid a telegraph line from Lake Tanganyika to Stanley Falls. He then spent some time prospecting in South Africa before returning to the Congo to reform the Abir Congo Company on behalf of Leopold II of Belgium.
context_section_description: Mohun's appointment at Zazibar ended in November 1897 and he returned to Belgium with Harriette, purchasing a house in Brussels.  Harriette remained at this house during the rest of Mohun's subsequent postings in Africa.  Mohun was contacted by the Belgian government, which had been impressed by his work on behalf of the United States, and was appointed a district commissioner (1st class) in their colonial service in June 1898.  In July King Leopold commissioned Mohun to lay a telegraph line from Lake Tanganyika to Wadelai on the White Nile.  Mohun accepted the position despite, just months before, condemning the region as a "wretched country in the heart of Africa".  Mohun left Antwerp, Belgium for Africa at the end of August 1898.
  The overhead telegraph may have been intended as a link in the proposed line from the Cape to Cairo, it was to be supported by 7m-high poles at 150m spacings and had been allocated a budget of three million francs.  Mohun was allowed free rein to choose his own staff and set out with five electricians/engineers (including some from Britain and France), Dr. Raan Horace Castellote as medical officer and a military escort commanded by Belgian Captain Verhellen.  He advertised among the Askari of Zanzibar for volunteers to provide the escort required by the expedition, and received more than one thousand responses. From these, he selected one hundred men to accompany him, twenty of whom had served with him in the Congo expedition of 1894.  The work was hoped to have been completed by 1900.
  In order to negotiate with the local population along his route, Mohun took "100 boxes [of] trade goods consisting of bells, knives, locks, mirrors, music boxes, watches, clocks, fezzes, and other odds and ends". His diary also notes that spectacles, Arab-made incense and American-made cloth were popular, and that he used the latter to pay his Askari escort. The expedition also included porters to carry the equipment and to lay the telegraph line.  In addition to laying the telegraph Mohun was instructed by Dhanis to use his askaris against parties of Batetela mutineers that still plagued the region in the aftermath of the rebellion of 1897-8.
  A ship named Sir Harry Johnson took them from Zanzibar to the African mainland in the German colony of Tanganyika.  The expedition then proceeded to the settlement of Fort Johnston at the southern tip of Lake Nyasa where they replenished their food stocks with fish from the Shire River.  Mohun's party then proceeded along the western bank of the lake to the settlement of Karonga in North-Eastern Rhodesia.  The expedition probably used the Stevenson Road which connected Karonga to Zombe at the southern tip of Lake Tanganyika.  At Longwe the group encountered Ewart Grogan, the British explorer then in the process of completing the first crossing of Africa from south to north. Captain Verhellen drew Grogan's attention to a group of pale Southern Reedbucks.  Grogan shot one and sent its pelt to the Zoological Society of London where it was regarded as potentially the first sighting of a new form of the species.
  Mohun's group then began laying the telegraph line (starting at Albertville), heading north along the western bank of the Lake and entering the Congo Free State before turning west to meet the River Congo at Kasongo.  Shortly after entering the Congo in July 1899 the party, then comprising just ten European men, came under attack by a force of cannibal tribesmen.  Mohun estimated that his opponents numbered some 1,500 men and claimed to have inflicted 300 dead and 600 wounded in exchange for 9 men killed and 47 wounded in his party.   Mohun was said to have contributed much to the party's defence with his Winchester rifle and was reinforced part way through the engagement by three companies of native infantry sent by Dhanis.  The cannibals subsequently fled towards Lake Tanganyika.  Castellote died on the expedition on 26 September.  In December 1900 Mohun's family contacted the US ambassador to Belgium, Lawrence Townsend, to ask him to investigate rumours of his death
caption: Mohun's expedition may have been intended to form a link in the grand "Cape to Cairo" telegraph earlier proposed by Cecil Rhodes
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